Chapter 1

My world ended three days before the SATs.

Tiffany, my stepsister, handed me a protein shake.

"For energy, Sarah," she said, her smile too wide.

I trusted her. My father had married her mother after my own mom died, a death that always felt wrong.

Tiffany wanted my Yale spot, my father' s approval, everything I had.

I drank the shake.

Then, darkness.

I woke up in a cheap motel room.

My head pounded.

SAT cheat sheets were scattered on the bed. A stolen test booklet. My phone, logged into an answer-sharing group.

Campus security from my private school stood there. Local news bloggers, cameras flashing.

"Cheater," the headlines screamed the next day.

Yale rescinded my early admission.

I couldn't retake the SATs that year.

My father, Mr. Miller, a man obsessed with public image, was furious.

"You've shamed this family," he yelled.

He disowned me. Cut me off.

Chad Peterson, my boyfriend of two years, popular and seemingly devoted, feigned support.

I found out I was pregnant.

Assaulted while drugged, though I didn't know then Chad was part of it.

I moved in with him.

My friends went to Yale, Harvard, Princeton.

I became a young mother, isolated, my dreams dead.

Stress aged me. I looked ten years older than I was.

Five years passed.

Chad returned from a fancy internship.

I overheard him talking to a friend, boasting.

"Tiffany and I planned it perfectly," he said, his voice slick with pride.

"She needed Sarah gone. Valedictorian, Yale, the Miller inheritance – it was all for her and her mother."

My breath caught.

"And Sarah?" his friend asked.

Chad laughed. "I took care of her that night. Drugged, easy. She gave me a kid. Served her purpose. Time to upgrade to Tiffany. Her family's got the real Miller connection now."

The world shattered.

My stepsister. My boyfriend.

Betrayal, so deep, so cold.

I ran. Blindly.

A delivery truck.

Screeching tires.

Then, nothing.

A gasp.

I sat bolt upright in my own bed. My room.

Sunlight streamed through the window.

My heart hammered against my ribs.

The memory, the pain, so vivid.

I looked at my phone.

Three days before the SATs.

It was happening again.

No.

It was a second chance.